BAVX techniques help children learn

By LISA BRITTON
For the Baker City Herald

Bill Hubert speaks in a voice so low that it immediately snags your attention.
You want to listen; you want to learn.

Then he brings out rubber balls and bean bags.

It looks like playtime, but these simple tools allow him to see how to help a child learn.

Hubert is the founder of Bal-A-Vis-X. The name comes from Balance/Auditory/Vision/eXercises “for brain and brain-body integration.”

He spent three days in Baker City last week, giving presentations at the schools and to parents on Thursday, then leading a 17-hour training on Friday and Saturday to 70 local educators.

“This is huge,” said Nancy Ames, who uses the BAVX technique at Brooklyn Primary School. “It’s an enormous opportunity to have someone as well-traveled as him to come to our corner of the world.”

Of those registered, more than half work in the Baker School District.

“What we hope is we get enough of a trained cadre in the district that we can have BAVX leaders in each school,” Ames said.

The root of BAVX came when Hubert was teaching first grade 30 years ago in Wichita, Kan.

“Each spring, many of the students were not functioning,” he said.

He began studying the children from a martial arts perspective.

“I could see that most of the ones who were not functioning were essentially without rhythm and without balance,” he said.

“That observation was the starting point. And 30 years later, here I am.”

At first, he asked a lot of questions — could the children complete physical tasks, such as walking a straight line or skipping?

“If you cannot, what’s the story? If you skip or cannot, why?”

He began integrating balance exercises into the school day.

“As the physical abilities changed, academic and behavioral aspects changed for the better,” he said.

He’s developed more than 300 exercises that vary in difficulty and can be used for many ages, from 3 to 105.

As he spoke to the students at South Baker School, he followed a quick introduction with demonstrations.

He was joined by his assistant Tiffany Mercado, who began using BAVX as a sixth-grader. She’s now a senior in high school.

The exercises start simple, such as tossing and catching one bag or bouncing and catching one ball.

The key is concentration.

“Watch her eyes,” he says.

As she tosses the bag, Mercado’s eyes follow the movement from one hand to the other.

BAVX is about rhythm, and a distinct sound sequence immediately stands out — toss, catch, clap.

“The key to everything is the rhythm,” Hubert says.

Next he faces his assistant, and they toss the bags back and forth, then add the extra element of transferring the bag from hand to hand behind their backs.

It’s almost like watching a dance, the movements are so well orchestrated.

“It’s not a game. It’s not a sport. It’s not a race. They are exercises,” he says.

Then he asks student Devyn Efird to come forward.

Hubert demonstrates an exercise using a rubber ball, and Efird immediately mimics the movements.

“This is his strength,” Hubert says, pointing to his eyes. “I showed him what to do, and he instantly did it.”

Then he brings another student, Anna Svitak, forward, and asks Efird to go out in the hall and teach her the ball routine.

“You have three minutes to teach her,” he says.

As they leave, he turns back to the audience.

“Guaranteed. If you can do this, reading will be easier, math will be easier, handwriting will be neater.”

Mercado said that when she began using BAVX, she was able to track better, and her reading improved.

“My fluidity in reading is better,” she said. “Your attention increases. You can stay in that zone, listening to your teacher for a longer period of time.”

But mastering an exercise isn’t the only element of BAVX.

“As soon as you know how to do something properly, you are responsible for teaching others,” he says. “It’s about technique and control; it is about teaching others. They have to get out of themselves, take responsibility for someone else.”

Hubert and Tiff demonstrate more exercises, each more difficult than the last.

In one, she bounces and catches three balls, keeping a rhythm, sort of like juggling against the ground. She keeps the rhythm as Hubert takes a ball away, then adds it back in, then takes two away.

Watching makes you want to learn.

Then he gathers three students in a circle to work with a bean bag. As they practice, those in the audience begin mimicking the movements.

As a finale, he encourages students Michael Zemmer and Daniel Hoover to show what they learned, using one hand to bounce two balls.

Each time, they must complete one more bounce. Hubert praises each success, and encourages when a ball bounces away.

“We did this so you can see it’s a possible thing,” he tells the students. “You can all do this. Little by little, Baker City kids are going to learn how to do this stuff.”

And, as the students work on the exercises, Hubert said the teachers can determine how the student learns, whether by visual instruction, verbal instruction, or an integrated approach.

“This enables you to see inside a person’s skull,” he says. “It’s just marvelous stuff.”

More information is available on Hubert’s website, www.bal-a-vis-x.com.